Considerations for Using Events in Lightning Experience

Activity Reminders

• You can’t set reminders from New Event global actions, even if your admin adds the Reminder Set field to the global action layout.
• Lightning Experience activity reminders refresh every 10 minutes. As a result, users must save changes that impact reminders at least 10 minutes before reminders are scheduled. For example, if a user schedules a reminder to appear 1 hour before an event, the user must save changes at least 1 hour and 10 minutes before the event to see those changes on the reminder. Otherwise, users can experience limitations such as:
  • Users update their time zone settings and reminders appear at the time scheduled in the original time zone.
  • Event organizers invite attendees outside of the refresh cycle and attendees don’t get the reminder.
  • Events can sync to Salesforce (from Google Calendar™ or Microsoft® Exchange) outside of the refresh cycle and attendees don’t get the reminder.

Attendees

• In Lightning Experience and the Salesforce mobile app, the people you invite to your events are called attendees. (In Salesforce Classic, they’re called invitees.)
• In Lightning Experience and the Salesforce mobile app, users get the Attendees field when admins add it to Event page layouts or quick actions layouts for events.
• The Attendees field isn’t supported for compact layouts.
• The Attendees field can't be renamed.
• The Attendees field isn’t available on the activity timeline.
• Attendees see their name in the Assigned To field.
• An event attendee can't change the event type.

Event Series

Events that repeat have different names and behavior depending on where you create them. In Lightning Experience and the Salesforce mobile app, they’re called event series. In Salesforce Classic, they’re called recurring events. It’s best practice to edit repeating events in the user interface where they were created.

• If you enabled platform encryption for Event Description, event series created during Winter ’19 aren’t automatically encrypted. To encrypt series created during Winter ’19, edit the event series. Events that are updated to fall outside the series pattern aren’t encrypted with the series. To encrypt these exceptions to the series, edit the individual occurrence.
• To load your calendar quickly, some series are initially projected in Salesforce and only visible on your calendar later. As a result, even after refreshing, sometimes you don’t see all events from the series on your calendar immediately after saving. You can experience similar delays when deleting or editing your events. For example:
  • If you schedule a series that lasts longer than 365 days, you can see events that are scheduled within the next 365 days. To see subsequent events in the series, check your calendar when those events are within 365 days of occurring.
  • If you schedule a series that starts more than 365 days in the future, only the first occurrence shows on the calendar. The additional occurrences show on the calendar when they fall within the next 365 days.
  • If your admin has enabled shared activities, which let you associate multiple contacts or one lead to your events, then some events from the series can take a few moments to appear on your calendar.
• You can add related files and notes to individual events in a series but not the series as a whole.
• Events in a series can't be made to overlap with other events in the series.
• If you create a series in Lightning Experience, you can't update or delete the series from Salesforce Classic.
• You can’t edit the start date of a series. Instead, delete the series and recreate it with a new start date.
• When editing an event in a series, the Repeat checkbox is disabled.
• When you change a past event in a series, only that past event changes. When you change one future event, all future events in the series also change though past events remain unchanged.
• You can’t edit the series from events that fall outside of the series pattern.
• You can’t delete a series from an event that is edited to occur before the original start date of the series.
• You can delete individual events that are a part of a series only from the event's detail page.
• Attendees can delete individual events only.
• If you edit any of these fields for an event series, events that fall outside of the series pattern are updated along with the series. Previous changes to those events aren’t kept and deleted events are recreated.
  • All-day event checkbox
  • Start or end time
  • Recurrence pattern
  • Recurrence start or end date
• If you change a field on a single event and then change that field on the series, the series change overrides the change to the single event.
• A single series event can last up to 14 days unless your admin has enabled limits for event duration. In that case, you can’t create an event that lasts more than 24 hours.
• Editing the Assigned To field for an event series doesn’t update events that fall outside of the series pattern. Reassign these events to the new owner individually.
• If you schedule a series with events occurring more than 180 days in the past, all of the events in the series aren’t displayed on your calendar. You can see the first event in the series and events that occur within 180 days of the current date.
• If you view deleted event series from the Recycle Bin, you see an item that represents the series pattern and isn’t an event in the series. If you restore this item and don't see the series event on your calendar, try restoring another event in the Recycle Bin.
• If you have a custom field on an Event with a unique constraint, this constraint is enforced across all instances of a recurring series.
• Validation rules with errors can disrupt event series creation. To make sure your series show all events, test validation rules against single events and event series

Dragging to Edit Events

In Lightning Experience, no admin setup is required to turn on calendar dragging. However, dragging events is different than in Salesforce Classic.

• Users can drag events and other records that they’ve added to calendars to reschedule them. However, users can’t drag a contact or lead onto the calendar to create a meeting with that person.
• Users can’t drag all-day events onto time slots to add start and end times. Likewise, users can’t drag events to make them all-day events.
• Users can’t drag event series or recurring events to new time slots on the Lightning Experience calendar.

Export Events

You can’t create an event for another calendar application using the Export Event (formerly Add to Outlook) button. However, if you're set up to sync events using Einstein Activity Capture or Lightning Sync, events you create and edit from Lightning Experience or any of the Salesforce mobile apps sync to Microsoft® calendars or Google Calendar™ automatically.

Invitations

To send event invitations to attendees for events created in Lightning Experience or the Salesforce mobile app, you’re required to set up event sync using Einstein Activity Capture or Lightning Sync. See Set Up Users to Send Invitations to Attendees from Lightning Experience and the Salesforce Mobile App.

Important

Starting in Winter ‘21, Lightning Sync isn’t available to new Salesforce customers. Use Einstein Activity Capture to sync events, contacts, and emails between your connected account and Salesforce.

If you have Lightning Sync, use the migration tool to move to Einstein Activity Capture before Lightning Sync retires in April 2027.

If you use Lightning Sync with Microsoft Office 365 and Exchange Web Service (EWS) as your authentication method, complete your migration by August 2026 to avoid service disruption. In October 2026, Microsoft retires EWS for Microsoft 365 and replaces it with Microsoft Graph API. After migrating to Einstein Activity Capture, upgrade to the Microsoft Graph authentication method. See Upgrade Microsoft Office 365 Authentication Method to Microsoft Graph in Einstein Activity Capture.

This change affects all orgs except those using Government Cloud.

• Invitations initiated in Lightning Experience and the Salesforce mobile app are emailed to attendees from Microsoft® Exchange or Google Calendar™.
• Invitations initiated or updated from Lightning Experience and the Salesforce mobile app are always sent to attendees. Users can’t save edits to events without sending updates to attendees.
• Users can’t respond to event invitations from Lightning Experience or the Salesforce mobile app. While users can respond to invitations from Salesforce Classic, this action isn’t recommended for Einstein Activity Capture or Lightning Sync users set to certain sync directions. See Respond to Event Invitations from Your Microsoft or Google Calendar.